Treatment As a Tool for Investigating Cognition

Cognitive neuropsychological research studies of people with cognitive deficits have typically been directed either at investigating methods of intervention, or at furthering our understanding of normal and impaired cognition.

This book reports on research that combines these goals, using studies that use intervention as a ‘tool’ for investigating hypotheses about the functioning of the human cognitive system. The introductory chapter discusses some of the unique and more general difficulties that this approach faces, while the five reports describe intervention studies with children and adults with cognitive impairments – studies which investigate current theories of cognition. The studies demonstrate that the use of intervention to study cognition is a promising and valuable methodology.

Aiming to promote wider use of these combined methods, this book makes it clear that while the approach faces various methodological and interpretative challenges, it has the advantage of providing advances on issues of theory while, at the same time providing treatment to participants, and bringing together what have been largely separate research traditions. This book was originally published as a special issue of Cognitive Neuropsychology.

Lyndsey Nickels is a speech pathologist and Research Professor at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. Her research uses the cognitive neuropsychological approach to focus on developing theories of language processing, understanding language impairments, and evaluating their treatment.

Saskia Kohnen is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Cognitive Science, and Clinical Director of the Macquarie Cognition Clinic for Reading, at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. Her current research is focused on reading and spelling assessment, and interventions for children and adults.

Brenda Rapp is a Professor in Cognitive Science at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, and editor-in-chief of the journal Cognitive Neuropsychology. Her research focus is on understanding the cognitive and neural bases of written language processing.